Confused Survey Says Two Russian Energy Giants Top Google And Apple In Corporate Transparency

Transparency International ranks Russia’s two state-owned energy giants in the middle of the top 124 world companies for “transparency” because both have adopted detailed anti-corruption rules. The rankings do not ask whether these companies actually comply with their rules. Stock market valuations show the nonsensical nature of the Transparency International rankings. Investors are not willing to bet on the Russian energy giants because they are non-transparent on the most important risks, and they operate as instruments of Kremlin domestic and foreign policy. As such, they must pay the price for Putin’s adventurism in Ukraine and elsewhere.

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What If the Rich Really Gave Back as Obama Wants?

President Obama tells us that the rich should give back to society. He even knows many wealthy people who want to give back more. (I guess they can’t until their taxes are raised). We learn from him that the rich owe their success not to business acumen and risk taking but to public roads, schools, the courts, food stamps, disability payments, workplace regulation, and other government services. We even owe the first rumblings of the internet to DARPA, unfortunately the research arm of the military-industrial complex. (Or was it Al Gore?).  Obama feels it is only fair that the rich return what the government gave them. What business could survive without access by public road? Fair is fair, after all.

What would happen if we, like France’s socialist state, taxed away seventy five percent of earnings above one and a quarter million and  high-net-worth business executives with  $2.5 million in salary, dividends and rental property pay a marginal rate of 90.5 percent. At such rates, our rich would really be giving back to government what it is due, and perhaps more.  Fair is fair.

With so much “going back,” there is little reason to go forward. The “rich” should just cash in their chips, stop building their businesses or starting new ones, pay their high taxes, and live off their wealth, unless that is taxed away too. After all, the government can “invest” their money in Solyndras,  Volts, and entitlement programs. As Obama claims, government investment has higher returns than private investment.

If Steve Jobs had paid his fair share back to society after he made his first ten million, Apple today would today be a relatively small company worth less than a billion and employing a thousand or so. It would not be the world’s largest company in market cap, it would not employ 60,400 people worldwide, and we would not have the IPads, IPhones, Apps, and other innovative Jobs products, which improve the quality of lives and raise living standards. Apple shareholders would not hold shares worth a half trillion dollars.



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How Krugman Would Ru(i)n Steve Jobs’ Apple

The Left considers Steve Jobs, the charismatic PC pioneer, a self-centered individualist, who did not to conform to elite etiquette. As Warren Buffet and Bill Gates gave away money with great fanfare, Jobs quietly devoted himself to creating value in Apple. He was conspicuously silent as Buffet recruited the super rich to argue for higher taxes. He told President Obama unwelcome truths (“Apple jobs are not coming back to America”).  He advocated school vouchers and he emphasized the importance of the family (oral history interview). He did not dash to DC to testify on the latest fad or navigate the elite cocktail party circuit. He had more important things to do.

Although Steve Jobs was a major donor to Democrat causes, his errant behavior did not sit well with the “progressive” political class. Now six months after his death at age 46, the attack on his legacy is in full swing, fueled by Apple Computer’s new status as the world’s richest corporation.

The Left’s standard bearer, Paul Krugman  snidely labels Steve Jobs (Jobs, Jobs, and Cars) the “heroic entrepreneur, the John Galt, I mean Steve Jobs-type ‘job creator’ Republicans love.”  Krugman rates Jobs’ achievements as inconsequential relative to Obama’s Detroit bailout – “the single most successful policy initiative of recent years.” Per Krugman, real heroes preserve vital “economic ecology and industrial clusters,” even if it takes taxpayer money. The heroes are not rugged individualists but union-industry-government partners, who, according to Obama’s State of the Union address, “work as a team” and “get each other’s backs.” 

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